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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29340276">Noon, Night, Morning Early</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/koldtblod/pseuds/koldtblod'>koldtblod</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>And not to be all Not Like The Other Girls but, As slow as a burn as I could get in a one shot, Comfort, F/F, I don’t know where and when I got this idea of them, I’d die for Mrs Sadie Adler, I’d kill for Miss Molly O’Shea, Just gals being pals if u know what I mean, Loneliness, Molly definitely thinks that way, Shady Belle, WLW pop off I guess, Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart, Wishful Thinking, and so on - Freeform, but erm</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 12:33:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,504</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29340276</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/koldtblod/pseuds/koldtblod</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Molly needs a shoulder and it’s Sadie she finds.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Molly O'Shea/Dutch van der Linde, Sadie Adler/Molly O'Shea</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Noon, Night, Morning Early</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I, er... was writing something else but I got sidetracked by my love for both Mrs Sadie Adler, widow, and a Miss Molly O'Shea. I wrote this on weekday hangover so please any errors, let me know. :*</p><p>Set in the Shady Belle timeline of, you go to find Jack, but then ignore every mission with purpose to starve off the inevitable.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>   When Molly comes to America, she’s vibrant and fiery and the men in the dockside hotel sing <em> Star of the County Down </em> to her.</p><p>   They don’t know anything about Ireland but work respectable jobs and treat Molly as well as could be expected, which isn’t saying much, but Molly is infrequently wooed. She’s caught on a dream. On stories of adventure and drama passed down through time of the wild, untameable west and no man in nought but a union suit and ill-fitting jeans in the east is fit to catch her eye.</p><p>   Here, the sun rises the same as over the River Liffey. Molly hears Irish accents on occasion and the young lad of 12 who lets her ride in the wagon, down from Boston into New York when she first arrives, tells her his mother’s sister’s father had also made the trip some several years before.</p><p>   In Molly’s mind, however, there are richer pickings.</p><p>   She has no interest in Irish men, whose knowledge of the world lies solely within the 302 miles north to south of their homeland. She wants something more. Something better.</p><p>   Molly isn't willing to settle for anything less than brilliance.</p><p>   When she meets Dutch, two whiskeys to the wind, in a smokey little bar in Topeka, he's hard and dangerous. There's a twinkle in his eye and a secret behind the suave smile, a pocket watch glinting against the crimson of his vest and Molly melts in the middle.</p><p>   She says to herself, right then and there, that's the man she'll marry.</p><p>   Doesn't know a thing about him, only he's here for business.</p><p>   A revolver on his hip.</p><p>   A silver knife sheafed on the outside of his thigh.</p><p>   For a girl like Molly, it's very exciting.</p><p>   She's a fool for believing the tales of romance that are spun in silk around bad men with hearts of gold, and Dutch tells her much the same. But believe Molly does, because she's young.</p><p>   She's stupid and starved.</p><p>   She's in love before she knows it because it's difficult to resist a man with that easy-breeze charm who, in himself, is wholly a vision of the west, overtly ambitious and with a quicker draw than Molly has ever known. She doesn't see for a moment how anything could go wrong with Dutch Van der Linde who, always at his best, is everything opposed to what good, well-bred girls like her should search for in a future.</p><p>   His hands adorned with rings pressing into the dip of Molly's back, guiding her onto his lap on that very first night, should heed a warning – but Molly is thrilled. Her soul ignites. Dutch's mouth finds the soft, untouched skin beneath Molly's ear and his chest rumbles with knowing laughter when she leans to the touch.</p><p>   She thinks she surprises him, too.</p><p>   Shouldn't let a man grip her waist with such force nor dance with intention to hold his eye, without granting a kiss. It piques Dutch's interest in Molly when she makes a show without giving in. Becomes a challenge. Molly prays desperately for his return, hoping she hasn't missed her chance and striking the days off one by one, until there in the bar is Dutch once more.</p><p>   With a gang of men behind him.</p><p>   A sleek, subtle smirk curves beneath his moustache as he rakes Molly over from afar. And just like that. Dutch sells himself as a picture of perfection and Molly buys into the fantasy. She wraps herself in a blanket of the man's alluring words, of attraction and affection and,</p><p>   "Miss Molly O'Shea, I'll make you rich again."</p><p> </p><p>   It doesn't last.</p><p>   Molly never wants money and she's besotted enough to think that Dutch means in different ways – rich in love, not in gold. By the time Molly figures it out, it's hardly important because she's already caught up. She has gunsmoke in her hair. She has a place to sleep inside Dutch's tent and believes the sun shines with him even on the dullest of days.</p><p>   But in Winter, they freeze.</p><p>   And never thaw.</p><p>   It's been almost four years and Dutch brings a new man into their throng, saying he saved him, bigging him up. He starts talking great about the plans on the table, that change three times over, and then they're running from Blackwater to Cotler to Valentine and Molly feels the reigns snatch out of her hands.</p><p>   Irritation stems from frustration and Dutch won't keep still, not even for a moment.</p><p>   He starts to bat Molly's hands away whenever she goes to reach to him, and their nights no longer are filled with hushed whispers and sweetness. It's a rejection that Molly has never experienced. Should have expected but failed to prevent. She doesn't know what she's done, nor how to reel Dutch back in.</p><p>   Yet against the odds, Molly attempts to sympathise. She perseveres. A man's problems are something she can't understand, after all, and she has to trust in Dutch and keep the faith, like everyone else, to prove that she's worth a damn. That whatever Dutch had seen or felt beneath her skin on the night they first made love – heated, passionate and leaving marks that Molly was reluctant to let heal – was deserving of his time.</p><p>   But they move again.</p><p>   And again.</p><p>   And Molly keeps stretching, straining, striving for Dutch's attention until she's worn thin. She doesn't recognise the woman she's become any more than she recognises this version of Dutch in comparison to the man, long ago so it seems, who had taken her into arms and kissed her breathless.</p><p>   She checks her lipstick; brushes more rouge over her cheeks. She presses close to Dutch in the late of the night and tries to feel his beating heart beneath the white shirt, whispering madly,</p><p>   "I love you still."</p><p>   "And I you."</p><p>   But she can't find it. Molly's thinks it's frozen or shrivelled up in Dutch's chest and even when they argue, when Molly starts to shout because she's lovesick, lonely, and Dutch towers above with ice in his eyes, a low threat on his lips, his pulse doesn't quicken.</p><p>   He frightens Molly, in times like this.</p><p>   Dutch takes the danger she had admired in the beginning and transforms it into something wicked and knotted. Using it against her.</p><p>   Any anger, Molly thinks she could deal with. She would welcome fury if only to prove that Dutch was capable of something, anything, other than cold indifference. He laughs without any of the earlier charms at Molly's expense. Dutch is only moved by her insinuations when they're shrill; when they're too loud to drown out with music or literature.</p><p>   And Molly's passion and jealousy give way to despair.</p><p>She knows to tell the other women, that Dutch’s feelings are true, is a desperate lie, but Molly is too proud to admit anything else aloud.</p><p>She stews.</p><p>   She cries when she thinks the camp’s eyes are turned away.</p><p>   She starts looking elsewhere.</p><p> </p><p>   It shouldn't be much to ask.</p><p>   What Molly really needs is a shoulder to lean on, or an ear to listen to her warbled sufferings as paranoia creeps into the spaces that Dutch abandons. Whilst Molly knows that comfort is rarely found at the bottom of bottles, with Karen as poster-child, it surely isn't coming from anywhere else.</p><p>   It doesn't hurt to try.</p><p>   It doesn't help any either and Molly finds herself sitting, day after day, on the floor of the old house. There's gin on her breath, dirt beneath her nails and the accusations, whenever she dares to open her mouth, are sharp and further isolating.</p><p>   She tells Arthur to leave her alone.</p><p>   She regrets it later, when he doesn't attempt to defy and no one else comes to coax her out, back into the throng.</p><p>   The truth of it all, if Molly admits, is that she's been played; taken for a fool when she should've seen it coming, right from the start, and now there's nothing to be done. No love letter nor poetry penned in her floral calligraphy script will woo Dutch when his eyes have already begun to wander and, Molly reckons, even if she signed them from Mary-Beth as a guise, Dutch would still be too wrapped up in his plans of glory.</p><p>   Some day soon, Molly is going to break.She feels brittle, as if she’s starting already to crack in several places and it isn't helped when she realises that everyone knows and is talking about her.They murmur quiet and behind their hands, wondering how long she'll last. Even Micah is keen is voice his opinion, calling Molly a stuffed-shirt snob who's fit for nought but nagging, when he thinks she's out of earshot.</p><p>   And, "Is it any wonder that Dutch can't stand her!"</p><p>   "It ain't none of your business," Abigail tells him.  She's moving away as Micah leers, in a shit-eating grin, but Molly glances over in time to see Miss Grimshaw shrug and nod in weary agreement.</p><p>   Perhaps that’s the trigger.</p><p>   On the night of Jack's return, it comes to a head. Reeling, miserable, strung highly enough to swing, Molly makes her entrance. She corners Dutch, stumbling as she goes, in a chair beside the campfire and wails about how he's ruined her life.</p><p>   As if Dutch, and Dutch alone, is to blame for Molly's shortcomings.</p><p>   For being so blind. So wildly in love.</p><p>  And she spits out those words, meant to command respect: "I'm a lady!"</p><p>   Dutch shakes his head.  He's seen every part and sure enough knows, that whatever they've done, out of marriage, under God, is far from refined. Not so pretentious. With his irritation obvious, Dutch tells her to go to sleep.</p><p>   Molly tells him to leave her alone, the precise opposite of what she'd wanted.</p><p>   She stomps back to the house and collides with another.</p><p>   A Mrs Sadie Adler, sober and saintly.</p><p> </p><p>   When Molly wakes up, she's alone in the room.</p><p>   There's a wedding ring gleaming in the bright morning sun on the table beside the bed, initials faint but legible – J.A. – engraved to sit flush against the wearer's skin.</p><p>   Outside, in the camp, she can hear Dutch shouting.</p><p>   Forming new plans, and about faith, loyalty, perseverance.As if those words meant anything between the two of them.</p><p>   Molly doesn't move. She fingers the rim of the gold band for a moment before slipping it on, tighter in fit than would it be made for her and less ornate than Molly would have chosen. Somehow, still right.</p><p>   Reigniting something that had grown numb in Molly's chest.</p><p>   And frightening her, too.</p><p>   She quickly takes it off and buries her face back into the pillow.</p><p>   Inhales lingering traces of lavender.</p><p>   Willing the pounding in her head and heart to quiet back down.</p><p> </p><p>   Sadie doesn't wear the ring.</p><p>   Not anymore, although it shows signs of affection from several years previous and must have been loved to death.</p><p>   She isn't like the other women, Molly begins to notice, hovering in their peripheral without ever coming closer. She doesn't keep their secrets, she doesn't sew their clothes; she talks to Abigail, sometimes, quiet and off-side, but doesn't attempt to break into the circle where Mary-Beth, Tilly and Karen all sit.</p><p>   She isn't anything like Miss Grimshaw, either, tyrannical and tight-laced.</p><p>   Sadie keeps to herself, polishes her rifles, runs errands with Arthur and keeps out of the way. The only exception is when Dutch gets to talking about O'Driscoll, or when they raid the camp, and <em> then </em> she's there, guns ablazing. Blood on her shirt.</p><p>   A regular, almost, to a life lived hard.</p><p>   Molly doesn't know what to make of it, but she tries all the same. Whatever fleeting friendship Sadie had offered, on the night she put Molly to bed, is greater than anything Molly has felt in months. She yearns for the recognition. The compassion. She shelves her preconceived ideas of women with strong hands, permanent scowls, trousers instead of skirts and rough voices, and <em> tries </em>.</p><p>   And the more Molly sees, the more she likes.</p><p>   The more she's inclined to inject herself into Sadie's good graces, into the outskirts of the gang. With the men rarely thanked. Where making a meal is just something expected and standing guard a necessity, except to the people who matter.</p><p>   And notice.</p><p>   Sadie can hardly be seen as one of the men, but if Molly drinks, she can convince herself too that Sadie Adler is a Samuel. </p><p>   She can flatten the curve of the bosom and square out Sadie's jaw, pretend the long hair is all that’s hiding an Adam’s apple and use the husk of her voice to advantage. On sleepless nights – with Dutch turning colder still, denying all attachment and growling,</p><p>   "Just let me be!"</p><p>   – Molly wanders around camp, a bottle in hand, and she watches.</p><p>   It’s easy to see the pull of muscle through Sadie's shirt as she hefts bags of grain up over her shoulder without any struggle. There is something masculine in the way she walks that reminds Molly, almost cruelly, of Dutch and harkens to a time now long gone. Sometimes, if she drinks <em>too</em> <em>much</em>, Molly can even picture herself curled between the woman's open thighs beside the campfire.</p><p>   Her calloused hands in Molly's hair.</p><p>   Sweet words in her ear.</p><p>   Hard fibre and power sitting solid with the illusion of safety and reliance. </p><p>   She always feels ashamed when Sadie looks up, catching her eye. Molly is glad of the darkness when the embarrassment flares hot in her cheeks and Sadie keeps her gaze fixed steady, even as Molly scuttles away. Yet not enough to stop.</p><p> </p><p>   She's afraid, when she first seeks the woman out.</p><p>   Under the cover of the evening like speaking is a sin and, at any moment, Dutch will appear and tell Molly that everyone else is just as bored as he is with her constant misery.</p><p>   Sadie is sitting on the porch, her knife in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She's been flipping the knife over in her hand, catching the hilt on every spin, but she sheafs it in the wood on the floor beside her feet when Molly approaches, and the cigarette goes down too. Whilst Sadie's eyes are guarded, there is something else behind the walls she’s built when Molly lowers herself onto the adjacent chair.</p><p>   Almost as if she knows.</p><p>   There is pity in her gaze, as well – although Molly does her damndest to ignore it – and pulling at the creases beside Sadie’s mouth.</p><p>   "You okay?" she asks cautiously.</p><p>   Molly takes a breath.</p><p>   Now that she’s here, she’s bordering on overwhelmed, tears spiking hot in the corners of her eyes and hands shaking before she presses them against her knees.</p><p>   Close up, Mrs Adler doesn’t look anything like a man. Her lashes are too long. Her cheek isn’t dusted with stubble, only a streak of dirt cutting across her nose. She rubs it stiffly with the back of her hand, sniffs and pushes her hat back further from her forehead. Her elbows come to rest on either of her splayed knees.</p><p>   "Huh?" she asks.</p><p>   "I'm not sure," says Molly.</p><p>   Sadie shrugs, almost. She shifts her shoulders in a way that suggests it, without any of the commitment of nonchalance.</p><p>   "Well," she sighs. "If you ain't sure..."</p><p>   "You," says Molly.</p><p>   With enough haste that Sadie’s eyebrow quirks in surprise. Steadying herself, feeling the alcohol still burning in the back of her throat, Molly presses on.</p><p>   "You were in love, once."</p><p>   "Right..." agrees Sadie.</p><p>   Narrowing slightly. The dry skin on her lips cracks anew when she purses them.</p><p>   "What d’you do, t' get over it?"</p><p>   "You don’t,” Sadie tells her.</p><p>   She's closing up without realising. Her arms fold into her stomach and her knees meet in the middle as her gaze drifts over to Dutch beside the medicine wagon, patching over the bruises on his knuckles.</p><p>   Alive and breathing.</p><p>   Not killed in cold blood and left to freeze over beneath the snow.</p><p>   When her nostrils flare, when Sadie’s face hardens and her mouth twists into a grimace, before she even looks back, Molly knows she’s overstepped. It isn’t her place to talk about things like this with a widowed woman. Not with anyone, inside or outside the inner circle.</p><p>   She shoulda kept quiet.</p><p>   "I’m sorry – " she whispers.</p><p>   Too late, too slow.</p><p>   She goes to reach out. Anxiety is gripping her chest but Molly thinks it would lessen if she held Sadie’s hands in hers and they’d tremble together. But Sadie jerks back. She must see the movement out of the corner of her eye and pulls gracelessly to her feet, her arms coming out, defensive and spooked.</p><p>   "Don’t touch me," she hisses.</p><p>   And like that, in an instant, Sadie is gone.</p><p> </p><p>   "I don't deserve you, my dear," Dutch had said once.</p><p>   Naked and quiet and stripped of all ego as they lay beside one another, with the buzz of the summer in the air outside.</p><p>   Molly had teased, "I reckon you'll leave. Find a younger girl an' move on, if the stories are right."</p><p>   She hadn't meant it.</p><p>   Wanted him, desperately, to get down on one knee there and then.</p><p>   But Dutch was unfazed. Always had a comeback. He chuckled deeply and slowly, rolled to lean above her and smiled in that way – dark yet enticing. Knowing Molly was right.</p><p>   "Look at you!" he'd said, and it served to placate. "How could I possibly?"</p><p>   Keep the promise?</p><p>   He couldn't.</p><p> </p><p>   Back into isolation Molly goes, choking the panic that crawls into her throat. When she lies down beside Dutch, the subsequent evening, he gets up and Molly spends the next several hours staring at the ceiling.</p><p>   She doesn't know what she's supposed to do or who she's supposed to talk to, to lessen the loneliness.</p><p>   Sadie even avoids her for several days.</p><p>   Until...</p><p>   One afternoon.</p><p>   When Molly is alone up in the room, sitting on one of the rickety old chairs that Dutch had pulled close to the window, and watching the gang in the camp down below carry out their chores without much of a thought for her, Sadie appears in the doorway.</p><p>   "Took somethin’, alright, to ask that kinda question," she says. "Maybe not guts. But you ain’t stupid, Miss O’Shea."</p><p>   "Think I might be," says Molly quietly. Ashamed. She looks away and Sadie’s sigh fills the air between them. "Only a fool’d put herself in this position."</p><p>   "Well, maybe," says Sadie. "But I know why you’re askin'."</p><p>   "It wasn’t polite."</p><p>   "Wasn’t proper," says Sadie, "to run off like that neither."</p><p>   "It’s none o' my business."</p><p>   "Right, an' you shouldn’t’a asked. But you did. An' I’m here."</p><p>   Her fingers then are light against Molly's arm. A soft, experimental touch, far gentler than Sadie looks, but enough to raise the hairs beneath and bring Molly’s eyes back around. Sadie crouches on the floor in front of her. This time, whilst there’s still hesitation, perhaps a hint of distrust, there’s vulnerability tugging along in her expression. Molly dares herself to move. She twists her wrist and slides her hands into Sadie’s, cradled against her knees.</p><p>   Counts the seconds.</p><p>   Tries to read more into Sadie’s face but only feels the thrum of another pulse through her fingers.</p><p>   Molly wants to pull Sadie’s hand to her mouth and kiss her knuckles like Dutch once did to her. Doesn’t know why. Truthfully she’s startled, and grateful, for being given the time of day once more, but Sadie beats her to it. Dusky lips against the freckled skin.</p><p>   Molly breathes through a shudder, and it turns into a sob. She’s being pulled down onto the floor before she realises and cradled like a child in Sadie’s arms, crying, choking on a plethora of confessions about herself, about Dutch, about Ireland and leaving and – Sean, of all people – letting everything she knows be ripped away and left with nothing but an idea of who she’s supposed to be.</p><p>   Sadie doesn’t say much.</p><p>   "Okay," is all she manages, between the cries, and she holds Molly close and warm with a tenderness she doesn’t remember having ever experienced before.</p><p>   It’s some time later, when the tears have dried to salt trails on Molly’s face and they’re backed against the wall, but still hunched together, that the shout for dinner goes out.</p><p>   "Are you goin'?" asks Molly, when Sadie looks up.</p><p>   "I ain’t hungry," she says.</p><p>   But her stomach answers with a gurgle, and Molly laughs sadly.</p><p>   "I’ll be fine," she says, coaxing Sadie to her feet. "I got nowhere t' go. You know where I am."</p><p>   "I reckon so."</p><p>   "Then get yourself fed."</p><p>   It takes longer still for Molly to convince herself out, and by then the pot is near empty.</p><p>   They don’t have much to talk about, over the next few days.</p><p>   Sadie goes back to her business and Molly keeps her head bowed, trying to drown out the sound of Dutch’s voice when he starts talking big about the bank in Saint Dennis. When they catch each other’s eye, occasionally across the camp, Molly offers small smiles.</p><p>   Sadie inclines her head.</p><p>   She looks so right with a rifle in hand that it’s almost enough to convince Molly, after all, that Mrs Adler is precisely the woman she should have spent time with, years ago back in Dublin. It might have toughened her up, thickened her skin, where once Molly had thought she <em> was  </em>tough; cocksure, enough to discard her mother's warnings about the men who would seek to break her heart if she gave them too much.</p><p>   At the very least, Sadie would have taught Molly well on how to speak to people from different backgrounds. And Molly has to admit now, she struggles with that.</p><p>   One night, she gives in.</p><p>   There’s a chill in the bedroom that has little to do with temperature, and more the sight of Dutch’s hair curling black on the pillow beside her. Three times Molly tries to wrap herself around the man; thinks if only he would turn, offer comfort, that perhaps she could cope. Get ideas of other people with softer smiles out of her head.</p><p>   But he doesn’t. Dutch rebuffs her.</p><p>   On the first time, there’s a noise, a warning grumbled low in his throat like an animal; the second, where he shrugs Molly's hands away from his shoulders in irritation; and the third, where he snaps,</p><p>   "Goddamn, woman! I just need some rest."</p><p>   Molly gets the idea. With stinging eyes, she leaves the room in her nightwear, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders and goes to Sadie. She shouldn’t expect to find the woman awake but her appearance, at the foot of the bed, stirs the desired attention.</p><p>   Sadie squints through the darkness for a moment before she mumbles,</p><p>   "Molly? Oh, Lord."</p><p>   And then Molly is stumbling onto the blanket and shivering into her arms.</p><p>   The sun rises again in the morning.</p><p>   The bed beside Molly when she reaches out is warm, not yet abandoned, as Sadie sits and combs her hair out of its braid. Golden in the early hour. Like the ring on the table serving as a constant reminder of mourning.</p><p>   She must hear Molly stir, for she glances over her shoulder.</p><p>   "Mornin'," Sadie murmurs.</p><p>   "Hello," whispers Molly.</p><p> </p><p>   They don’t talk about that either.</p><p>   Dutch doesn’t ask where Molly went and Molly doesn’t think to tell him, nor does she offer any answers when in the subsequent nights she goes back to Sadie’s side.</p><p>   She wants to think of it as sisterly, familiar affection. Molly can’t tell herself that Sadie could be Samuel when she rests her head against the woman’s chest in the darkness and tucks her hand into the dip of her waist; when Sadie is so unmistakably female in form against her and smells like lavender beneath the dirt and the gun oil.</p><p>   She wants to.</p><p>   But Molly struggles with that, as well. No sister could lie so close and feel the butterflies and tingle in her spine as when Sadie’s breath ghosts across her cheeks, or when in sleep Sadie mumbles and presses delicate kisses to Molly’s hair.</p><p>   Perhaps remembering the old days.</p><p>   Dreaming of her husband.</p><p>   Molly can never amount to anything of the sort, but she's able to quell the ache in her heart temporarily. She fills it, instead of with a memory of who Dutch was, with the quiet conversations she has with Sadie in the darkest hours. With admissions that sound like secrets when they're whispered into the scarce space between them.</p><p>   "Why'd you dress like that?" she asks once.</p><p>   Sadie snickers.</p><p>   "Like what?" she says.</p><p>   "Like you're one o' the men," says Molly. "Half expectin' a union suit instead o' a nightgown. You'll get me confused, Mrs Adler."</p><p>   "Confused?" repeats Sadie.</p><p>   She laughs again and pinches Molly, who slaps at her arm before inching closer. The crook of Sadie's knee presses against hers and Molly lets her eyelids flutter when the curls are brushed away from her face. When she opens her eyes again, Sadie has fallen sober.</p><p>   "'Cause I never know when I'll need to run," she says.</p><p>   Quiet now.</p><p>   And maybe Molly is a comfort of sorts for her, too.</p><p>   Although there's a lot Sadie doesn't say, this in itself feels like a confession. Molly wants to ask what she thinks about Dutch; if she's also pinned her dreams now on the gang but can't shake the same terrible premonition. Likelihood is, Sadie isn't talking about that at all. As if fearing she's divulged too much, in one single, simple sentence, she shakes her head.</p><p>   Smiles again.</p><p>   "I wish I was like you," says Molly.</p><p>   Doesn't think for a moment what that implies, only knows that with Sadie, she is safe. That she can admit the anxieties she has within herself and not have them twisted.</p><p>   Sadie's eyes search hers in the darkness, just for a moment.</p><p>   Then she turns onto her back and Molly hears the slow, wounded sigh as it leaves her lungs.</p><p>   "No," says Sadie, "you don't." </p><p>   And she's right, in a sense.</p><p>   Molly wouldn't go crawling into bed with a woman who she'd rather make-believe was a man to soothe the insecurities about what the alternative, the reality, might mean if she were still happy elsewhere. If she were still to Dutch what Sadie had been to Jake. And vice versa. If that was the case, she wouldn't be wishing at all. Molly would be happy, bestowed with attention and adoration, but Sadie's husband would still be dead and Molly wouldn't have spoken to her at all.</p><p>   She can't truthfully say anymore, regardless, that if Dutch were to come to her in the morning with words of love, and courted her as in the early days with all of his smooth-talking grace, that she'd be swayed.</p><p> </p><p>   "Wilde," Dutch had said once, "is a fantasist, my dear."</p><p>   Crimson vest and cigar and boasting his full ego as they sat beside one another, under the guise of comparing literature.</p><p>   Molly had bristled, "I reckon you're intimidated. The idea that a man could love another same as a woman."</p><p>   She had meant it.</p><p>   Understood, full well, that there was something inherently wrong about the actions and had read in the newspaper about the author's incarceration a few years previous.</p><p>   But Dutch was unfazed. Always had a comeback. He chuckled deeply and slowly, leant to take the novel out of Molly's hands and smiled in that way – fond yet superior. Believing Molly was wrong.</p><p>   "Look at you!" he'd said, and discarded the book to the floor. "How could they possibly?"</p><p>   Hold her interest?</p><p>   They couldn't.</p><p> </p><p>   Neither could Dutch.</p><p> </p><p>   Molly’s heart races, some buried deep emotion thrashing its head like a horse in the stalls, whenever she has her hand resting against the soft of Sadie’s belly and thinks she could lower it.</p><p>   In the small hours of the morning.</p><p>   Somewhere between darkness and dawn.</p><p>   Molly could press between Sadie's legs and bring even softer sounds spilling from between her lips.</p><p>   Catch her mouth.</p><p>   Moan the woman’s name over and over and drink up every time in return that Sadie whispered hers.</p><p>   It feels like danger.</p><p>   Molly forces herself out of bed much earlier when thoughts like this enter her head. She knows it's a betrayal of whatever trust Sadie has allowed; definitely a trespass against God and under Heaven and whilst Molly can't be prosecuted in the ways of Oscar Wilde, sins of the flesh begin and are wrought in the mind.</p><p>   And she can't shake that loose.</p><p>   Molly knows she’s doomed when, later on one of these afternoons, Sadie catches her arm. Says, in that rough voice,</p><p>   "Where’d ya go?"</p><p>   And every lustful thought and wishful daydream bombards her at once and with a violent force.</p><p>   Molly shakes her head.</p><p>   "I can't do this," she mutters.</p><p>   And flees.</p><p>   She takes to her knees. Hail Mary, full of Grace, The Lord is with thee.</p><p>   The Lord hath abandoned thee.</p><p>   The Lord carries twin revolvers and an arrogant air and struts around camp and lives without morals regardless, so why does Molly care? She's been running for years.</p><p> </p><p>   That night, she goes to Sadie again.</p><p>   Molly tries to recall how bright the stars had seemed when she first set foot off the boat, onto dock, and holds the vision close to her chest. In distant memory, she had been excited.</p><p>   There is none of that, only the longing that came before, coupled with a fearful acceptance of what she wants.</p><p>   She doesn't dress up.</p><p>   Doesn't know what to expect.</p><p>   Instead, Molly sets out in her nightwear, like every time previous, but raises her fist to rap on Sadie's door. Without answer. The room is empty, save for the bed, the nightstand and its belongings.</p><p>   With confidence waning, Molly sits down.</p><p>   She tells herself, wait.</p><p>   Tells herself, patience. </p><p>   She will mark off the hours instead of days as she had with Dutch if she has to, and does, counting first when she hears Abigail passing in the hallway outside; later, John, following up the stairs; then Dutch; and finally, Arthur and Hosea.</p><p>   Murmuring hoarsely, "It don't feel right."</p><p>   It's all wrong, but Sadie returns a short while later. The rifle is over her shoulder and the first three buttons of her shirt are undone, and one side of her suspenders have slipped over her arm.</p><p>   "Good Lord," she whispers.</p><p>   Because Molly has started to sweat.</p><p>   She feels it gathered on her upper lip and at the back of her neck, and her palms are slick against her knees. Must look like a deer, forsaken to the wolves, and trembling, terrified.</p><p>   "Can't sleep without me, huh?"</p><p>   "Somethin' like that," Molly tells her.</p><p>   She doesn't move.</p><p>   Sadie huffs as she digs into her pocket for some matches, coming past to light the oil lamp and catching Molly's eye.</p><p>   "What's he done?"</p><p>   "No," says Molly. "It's not – Dutch can – no."</p><p>   "Alright," says Sadie slowly.</p><p>   The scar above her eyebrow gives the false impression that she's frowning. Or she might be, as she props the rifle into the corner and finally lowers herself onto the bed. Legs askew. Mouth pulled tight. Hands in her lap, rough with dirt, with a chicken scratch running across the back of the left.</p><p>   She's waiting for something; an explanation that hasn't been needed before.</p><p>   If Molly thinks, she won't, and so she doesn't.</p><p>   She takes both of Sadie's hands into her own and, in an echo of earlier actions, presses a kiss to the back.</p><p>   "Oh," Sadie whispers.</p><p>   And now, without doubt, she is frowning.</p><p>  Her eyes follow the path of her arm down to where Molly still holds tight, trying to think, trying to show without opening her mouth because Dutch had been easy, Dutch had been coarse, and Sadie for all she dresses and speaks and walks like a man is nothing of the sort.</p><p>   She draws closer; frees and brings her palm to Molly's cheek and pulls her up. She lets Molly's lip catch on the heel of her hand and says,</p><p>   "It's like that, is it? Gotcha."</p><p>   Molly doesn't remember the last time she felt so hungry.</p><p>   Not with Dutch.</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">   Not with the boy she thought she loved in Dublin with chocolate eyes and caramel hair before she sailed West and he went East.</span>
</p><p>   Not even beneath a blanket with her best friend so many years before, through a haze of hormones, and with skirting fingers and desire pooling between Molly's thighs when she gasped, "Teach me how!"</p><p>   A memory repressed and cast to the ages.</p><p>   Sadie's pupils are blown wide.</p><p>   Simmering beneath the surface, there is something hesitant – holding her back – but only barely.</p><p>   "What d'you want?" she rasps, though it must be obvious, with Molly's fingers now in her hair, disrupting the braid, and their foreheads pressed together with only enough room to breathe. To feel the other's breath. "Molly, I – "</p><p>   "Can't say it."</p><p>   "Can't or you won't?"</p><p>   "Shouldn't."</p><p>   "Then show me."</p><p> </p><p>   She doesn't whisper Molly's name, when her trousers are little more than a garment flung carelessly to the floor instead of something symbolic. Sadie chokes it instead, desperate and keen, swearing as she moves Molly's fingers.</p><p>   Pressing harder.</p><p>   Hissing, "<em> There. </em>"</p><p>   Her body doesn't look any more like a man's than it feels, though it's hard in places where Molly is soft, and muscle ripples over her stomach when she convulses, clenches and her short nails dig into Molly's shoulders.</p><p>   Sadie doesn't relent, either, when she's coming down after smothering her whines in the pillow. With a tongue unyielding, with hair fanned out gold in the light from the lamp, just the same as the sun, she gives as good as she gets. Better, in fact. Turns Molly's prayers to Heaven in vain and has her crying with relief, shaking with her hands twisting in the sheets, thighs closing around Sadie's head and begging no more, before pleading, don't stop.</p><p> </p><p>   "Shoulda known you were sweet on me," Sadie tells her, afterwards.</p><p>   She lights her cigarette with the flame from the lamp and sits back again, naked as the day she was born, and laughs.</p><p>   Molly hasn't been able to move.</p><p>   "Why?" she groans.</p><p>   "I dunno..." Sadie shrugs. "Get a sense for it, y'know."</p><p>   "With women?"</p><p>   "With anyone."</p><p>   "D'you think Dutch knows?"</p><p>   Sadie scoffs around the smoke.</p><p> "He don't know  <em> enough </em>, by the sounds," she says. "What d'ya call him – sanctimonious?"  </p><p>   "And a bastard." Molly nods.</p><p>   "Yeah," says Sadie. "There's somethin'."</p><p>   "I really loved 'im, you know."</p><p>   "I know." And a pause. "I loved Jake. Still do. Shit."</p><p>   She's dropped ash on herself. Brushes it to the side with a gentle flick of her wrist and settles back, hand on her breast, rising, falling slowly.</p><p>   It doesn’t disappear.</p><p>   Doesn’t stop when it’s real.</p><p>   Sadie's heart beats uncannily quickly that night for someone who claims they have nothing to lose.</p><p> </p><p>   Molly has to leave, in the end.</p><p>   There was never going to be a dignified departure but she's spared, if only a little, by the bank job. After watching the handful of men who went with Dutch to catch Angelo Bronte trail back into camp, quiet and forlorn where Dutch is full of hot-headed, violent jubilation.</p><p>   Sadie's eyes find Molly.</p><p>   Her feet follow Arthur and they're hissing between themselves for several minutes.</p><p>   No one else seems to care for Molly's existence.</p><p>   Miss Grimshaw almost startles when they come face to face in the hallway the following afternoon, and she says with surprise,</p><p>   "Oh. You're still here."</p><p>   Molly hasn't seen the inside of the room she shares with Dutch for several days. Doubts even he realises she's around and so, readily, the decision is made.</p><p>   She doesn't pack a bag.</p><p>   The most Molly does is help herself at the crack of dawn to a broach and wad of cash from the tin to tide herself over, deciding she's earnt it and thinking, spitefully, that if Dutch really worried he'd shell out of his own pocket. Wouldn't be the least he'd done.</p><p>   Molly catches Sadie's hands on her way from the house, after the men and Abigail are gone, and begs:</p><p>   "Come with me!"</p><p>   She says she can't.</p><p>   Says with some desperately pained look on her face that she still has business and no, it ain't for Dutch, ain't for anyone 'cept me.</p><p>   And Jake.</p><p>   "But you go," Sadie tells her. She presses Molly's face between her palms and kisses her flush, like she'll never see Molly again, as if it's goodbye. "You go an' you hide an' you find a man – a someone – somewhere, better than here. An' maybe I'll see ya."</p><p>   Like she knows she damn won't.</p><p> </p><p>   Saint Denis becomes another drunken blur.</p><p>   Molly finds it far too easy, to crawl into the nearest saloon and slap a dollar on the counter, asking for whiskey. She's too close to Shady Belle and this she knows – at least until she hears what happened at the bank. Orders another drink.</p><p>   Hiccups her way through the night and cries again, without anyone to hold her.</p><p>   Going in circles over Sadie.</p><p>   Seeing Dutch's face once again on the bounty posters around the city.</p><p>   Crossing<span class="s1"> the two over in her head and buying bottles of liquor from the store until Molly can't say where one kindness stopped and other began and turned cruel and either way, regardless of who she picked, she's alone now.She doesn’t know whether Dutch had ever loved her or if Sadie ever could. Whether rough or gentle, better or worse, not with the ferocity Molly needed and not when they were both hung on something else. </span></p><p>   In the end, Molly doesn't care when Pinkertons find her.</p><p>   She laughs and hucks a spitball into Milton's face – got to be somebody's fault that everything went sideways – but as he wipes it away, a twitch to his eye, black leather gloves, Molly finds herself wishing he'd choke her to death.</p><p>   It must hurt less.</p><p>   She cleans herself up right after they release her, and there again.</p><p>   "Get me a drink."</p><p>   She ignores the advances of similarly drunken men beside the bar and argues with the women who slide their arms around her shoulders, having seen it all before, and tell her she's bonny enough to be a working girl. Enough of a wreck, as Molly understands, to stoop to their level. Denies their sisterhood.</p><p>   She finds she doesn't even mind when she's spotted by Uncle.</p><p>   Although she fights, all the way back and then some, it's satisfying to see the colour drain from Dutch's face. Rewarding, at last, to recognise some flicker, some semblance of emotion akin to hers, flash through the man's eyes as she yells.</p><p>    <span class="s1">And hears Sadie call her name, with the terrible realisation.</span>   </p><p>   Whilst the glory is short-lived...</p><p>   Despite the shot that rings in Molly's ears even before she feels herself split in two.</p><p>   Without a doubt, she can revel. <span class="s1">Molly is gone before she hits the ground, but her blood will stay hot on another conscience. </span></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I hope never again to use the words "made love" but that's just me.</p><p>Anyway, the title is from <i>The Wind That Shakes The Barley</i> (the Irish ballad, not the film). It was either that, or something from <i>Siúil a Rúin</i>. Whilst in context, both are far removed from the predicament Molly finds herself in, you can take the mournful longing of men being sent to war and displace it here.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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